The Glorious Triumph of The Saints

Solemnity of All Saints

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Matthew 5:8

There’s a battle raging!  It began in the Garden at the dawn of time.  It will end when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in power and glory to judge the living and the dead and to establish His kingdom forever.  You and I are participants in this battle.  We are also, in another sense, the battlefield.  The forces of heaven and hell are the combatants and the earth literally hangs in the balance.  Today, we celebrate those who are already victorious.  We know some of them- the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Patrick, St Francis and St. Clare of Assisi, St. Therese, and many others.  But there is a countless host whose names as yet are unknown to us.  They are the ones primarily in view on this Solemnity of All Saints.

Who are they?  “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”  So we hear in our first reading today.  They are those described by our Lord as “clean of heart”.  How did they get that way?  “They have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”  In other words, they were made this way by grace.  Only grace prevails over sin.  St. Paul writes, “Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more,” [Romans 5:20]. 

How does one come by such grace?  In other words, how does one triumph in this battle and inherit the glory of heaven?  To properly understand, we must go back to before the beginning.

In eternity past, Lucifer was a glorious angel in heaven.  But Lucifer was arrogant, prideful, and rebellious.  He persuaded a third of the angels to join him in a coup.  They were vanquished, of course.  Their penalty was to be cast down to earth where they roam restlessly, awaiting their final damnation.

When God created the heavens and the earth, it was all good.  His crowning moment was to create human beings, made in God’s own image and likeness.  He created them to live in glorious, intimate communion with Him.  But the Man and the Woman were deceived by the Evil One and they chose sin over paradise.  Thus, the battle began.  It was, and is, a battle for each soul.  Our Enemy continues to deceive us with his murderous lies.  God continues to reach out to us to redeem us by His grace.

In the fullness of time, God became human in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He lived the life of every person, suffered and died for our sins, and rose again, victorious over sin and death.  He ascended into heaven where He awaits the moment of the consummation of time.  He left us with this promise- that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

It's a wonderful story, and most of us have heard it.  But we don’t always grasp its meaning.

When Jesus chose the way of the cross He wasn’t just undergoing the means of our salvation, but He was demonstrating how we come to it.  The cross is death to our flesh, which becomes a means for the reviving of our souls.  It is here the Enemy goes to work.  He is constantly telling us, as he told our first parents, that God doesn’t really mean what He has obviously said and that there is something more to be discovered if we will only throw off the “bondage” of God’s word.  If we listen, we are doomed.  If we turn away, and trust in God, we will be saved. 

Our text refers to the “clean of heart”.  No one of us qualifies.  To be a saint and to gain heaven is impossible.  This is why we need God’s grace.  It is the only means by which our hearts can be cleansed from all sin and made fit for heaven.

God uses the ordinary events of life to try us as to whether we will choose heaven or hell.  Trials, tragedies, and the like, are intended to purge us of the dross of self-love so that we can be perfected in the love of God.

The Enemy is relentless, and we must be equally relentless if we hope to attain the prize.  There are all kinds of subtle lies of the Enemy that abound in our day.  We are told we must be happy and to do so we must be rich and be able to indulge every pleasure conceivable.  So many are laboring so hard for the wrong things.  In the end, only the love of God matters.

Those we celebrate today have attained that victory.  They are our heroes, our champions, and our examples.  What’s more, they themselves are ceaselessly offering intercession on our behalf that we, like them, will overcome and join them in eternal splendor and glory.  These were largely unknown while they lived on earth, but they will be greatly known for eternity.  They rightly discerned that this life was temporary and living for the things of this world was a deception.  They set their eyes on heaven and endured faithfully till the end. 

The Church offers us this feast to remind us that death comes to all.  What will be our lot afterward?  Don’t be deceived.  The things that seem so important now will dim greatly in comparison to the glory that awaits us.  But what if the glory is lost?  The agony of hell will be to spend eternity thinking about the countless times God reached out to us with His love and grace, and we refused it in order to gain a fool’s gold.  Don’t give in to the lie.  You will not be the exception to either death or the judgment that follows.

Rather, look to the saints!  They were people just like us, but they chose the hard path of the cross.  They were ridiculed, vilified, tormented, and killed.  But in their patience they possessed their souls.  Eternal life was their reward.  It can be ours as well!

Ponder the saints today.  Who are your favorites?  Who are your patrons?  What aspects of their lives stand out?  Ask for their prayers and imitate their virtues.  Here you will find the wonderful road of grace which they trod. 

Let these words from the Letter to the Hebrews provide our marching orders as we continue in this battle: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God,” [Heb. 12:1, 2]. 

May God be glorified in His saints!  Amen!